Report: Trump Has ‘Joked’ Mike Pence ‘Wants to Hang’ All Gay People

Mike Pence, the Vice President of The United States, Does Not Believe in Evolution

Even President Donald Trump is aware just how anti-gay his vice president is. According to a report in this week’s The New Yorker, Trump has “joked” that Mike Pence “wants to hang” all gay people. 

In “The Danger of President Pence,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer profiles the far right wing, uber-conservative, anti-LGBT, anti-women former Indiana governor, and details some of his interactions with the President.

“A staff member from Trump’s campaign recalls him mocking Pence’s religiosity,” The New Yorker notes. “When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, ‘Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!'”

Some joke.

Trump during the campaign had promised LGBT people he would be the most pro-LGBT president ever, and more supportive than Hillary Clinton. He of course lied. But to have chosen Pence as his VP, knowing the former Indiana governor’s positions on issues like LGBT people’s rights, is even more despicable.

Pence, of course, became nationally infamous for signing into law Indiana’s “religious freedom” bill that allowed anyone, including corporations, to discriminate against LGBT people. Here’s the photo of the signing ceremony:

 

It became such a lightning rod Pence was forced to sign another law specifying the first did not allow discrimination. It still cost the state at least tens of millions of dollars. In the Trump administration, Pence is believed to have a hand in many of Trump’s anti-LGBT moves.)

That same campaign staff member also “said that, when people met with Trump after stopping by Pence’s office, Trump would ask them, ‘Did Mike make you pray?’ Two sources also recalled Trump needling Pence about his views on abortion and homosexuality. During a meeting with a legal scholar, Trump belittled Pence’s determination to overturn Roe v. Wade. The legal scholar had said that, if the Supreme Court did so, many states would likely legalize abortion on their own. ‘You see?’ Trump asked Pence. ‘You’ve wasted all this time and energy on it, and it’s not going to end abortion anyway.'”

Trump clearly has no ideologies or moral callings, that’s always been clear. Which is why Pence is so dangerous: he does, and Pence is Trump’s bridge to the far right wing evangelical arm of the GOP.

The New Yorker details the rampant evangelical activity, as NCRM has reported, thanks to Pence, that takes place inside Trump’s White House.

There have been other evangelical Christians in the White House, including Carter and George W. Bush, but Pence’s fundamentalism exceeds theirs. In 2002, he declared that “educators around America must teach evolution not as fact but as theory,” alongside such theories as intelligent design, which argues that life on Earth is too complex to have emerged through random mutation. Pence has described intelligent design as the only “remotely rational explanation for the known universe.”

Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, does not believe in evolution.

At the White House, Pence has been hosting a Bible-study group for Cabinet officers, led by an evangelical pastor named Ralph Drollinger. In 2004, Drollinger, whose organization, Capitol Ministries, specializes in proselytizing to elected officials, stirred protests from female legislators in California, where he was then preaching, after he wrote, “Women with children at home, who either serve in public office, or are employed on the outside, pursue a path that contradicts God’s revealed design for them. It is a sin.” Drollinger describes Catholicism as “a false religion,” calls homosexuality “a sin,” and believes that a wife must “submit” to her husband. Several Trump Cabinet officials have reportedly attended the Bible-study group, including DeVos, Pompeo, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. In a recent interview with the Christian Broadcast Network, Drollinger said that Pence “has uncompromising Biblical tenacity” and “brings real value to the head of the nation.”

UPDATE:
National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), an LGBT legal organization, posted this in response:

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Hat tip: The Hill

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